Last August, Governor Paterson signed a series of bills to allow commercial net metering installations across New York State. Previously, only residential users were allowed to generate their own electricity from renewable sources and sell it back into the grid. The first such commercial installation in New York City was recently commissioned at 925 Bergen Street in Brooklyn by solar power installer Solar Energy Systems (SES) for Big Sue LLC, a general contracting and consulting firm that specializes in green design-build projects, which owns and operates the property. The installation is a 40 kilowatt solar array and, according to SES, is the largest commercial net-metered photovoltaic system in the entire country. According to Big Sue co-owner Susan Boyle, the company investigated a number of alternative power sources for 925 Bergen before opting for the solar array because of "the simplicity afforded by net metering."
